


Binders. Women.

by fresne



Category: Captain America, Civilization - Fandom, Les liaisons dangereuses | Dangerous Liaisons - Choderlos de Laclos, School House Rock
Genre: Gen, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-21
Updated: 2012-10-21
Packaged: 2017-11-16 18:28:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/542514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hardly a thousand words this is. Hardly enough to be binders "full" of women. </p><p>Still it's a thought. Half the world's population. In binders. Short stories in search of a point. Well, aren't we all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Binders. Women.

**Author's Note:**

> Some vignettes that came to mind while I looked at tumbling tumblr's full of binders.
> 
>  
> 
> If after reading my fiction here, you would like to read more about me and my writing check out my profile.

Binder Full of Women 

~~~~~~~~~~  
History:

We start with a half remembered story in search of a point.

It starts with a suffragette wedged between bearded men as a stage coach teeth that rattled down a rutted dirt road. 

Where was she going? That's been written in number two pencil and then erased from the page a dozen times. One more time and the paper will tear. She was going to the capital to throw an ax at a white male politician to prove a point. Or a painting. No. Maybe. She was going to a city to march with other women. There would have been signs and sashes. She was going somewhere to do something. 

What was her name? Hard to say. There's a smudge in the binder where her name should be. A fingerprint smearing sweat or tears or blood. Or strawberry jam. They look the same on the blue lines of the page.

What is and was important to this half remembered story with the carefully printed words is that she sat in a stage coach as it rattled down the road. What is important is that she was wedged. What is important is that she was the only woman on the stage. 

The man across from her with his pale forehead and sun reddened cheeks talked and talked and talked.

What did he say? He said all the things that men (and women too) sometimes say. About what can and cannot be done. What should and shouldn't be done. About women and places and unplaces. Being home to take care of the children, because every woman is maternal. Somewhere in there was the expected, "A woman's place is in the home." He talked about how he took care of his wife. He was a husband. He husbanded.

The coach jerked along its stages. The suffragette tidied her purse between her feet.

Finally, as these things will, the stage coach slowed dramatically to a stop in front of the man's house. Out front, a woman (his wife, of course) was chopping wood with wide arching swings of an axe. She split a piece in a single efficient stoke. She never had a name to be smudged from the half remembered story. She was the woman chopping wood. 

The suffragette grinned and she said something incredibly clever and witty and and it was perfect what she said. It summed up everything that could even be imagined about that moment. About the husband. About the woman working at the work of the world. It's unfortunate that we don't know what she said, but then again, think of that perfect to say in that moment and write it in here,

"..................................................................................................................................................." 

Lovely. That really was quite perfect.

Now then, the man clambered out and the suffragette moved into his space. She grinned at the other men in the coach. But they were ignoring her. 

Which was fine. There may have been in an ax in the suffragette's bag to throw at a politician or a beautiful painting that was valued more than that woman working in that yard. There may been a carefully written sign or sashes. There could have been a tambourine. 

In any case, she was going. The stage coach drove off the edge of the story.

~~~~~~~~~  
Wonders of the World:

"Wonders of the World: The various Wonders of the World vary greatly in quality, though by  
the end of the game you'll want all of them under your control. The best Wonder is without a doubt Women's Suffrage. With Women's Suffrage, a Republic can wage war without any unhappiness, and a Democracy can wage war with severely reduced unhappiness." http://www.the-spoiler.com/STRATEGY/Microprose/civilization.1.html

Scarlett playing Civilization and conquering the world wondered when they'd add birth control as a wonder. Hopefully before she hauled her civilization's ass to Alpha Centauri, while simultaneously waging war on Babylon and France. Always attacking her when she was about to invent something awesome. Still, she loved having tanks against chariots. Scarlett was like that.

~~~~~~~~~  
Comic Art:

Steve Rogers wasn't even born during the shirtwaist strike of 1909 (still - always - strange he had to put a 19 in front). He wasn't quite that old. He knew about it. Oh, yeah, he knew about it. Not just because he was from New York. His mom had worked at the Triangle shirtwaist factory. Had voted to strike.

She'd shake her head and tell him about being locked inside while she worked. Seventy-five hour weeks. About walking the picket with the other women. Thousands of women marching. Shouting. Yelling. She'd show him clippings from old yellowed newsprint gathered in a binder and tap her finger on pictures. She showed him her arrest record. She'd been sentenced to time in a workhouse for "being on strike against God." She'd been fifteen.

Every year on the anniversary of the Triangle factory fire in 1911, she'd comb his hair and have him put him on his best clothes. They'd go over to the Asch Building in the Village. Lay a carnation and listen to the memorial for the 146, mostly women, who'd been locked inside by the foreman. 

On the way back, she'd tell him about her friends. The women she'd worked with sewing and cutting. Every time on the way back home, they'd stop in front of houses and she'd tell him who'd lived there. Hopes and dreams. She'd put her hand on his shoulder.

All those cold years later, he could still feel her hand. He found her binder in the boxes of his things that they'd kept in storage all this time. He looked at the crackled yellow pages. Smiled to his mom smiling back at him from over a hundred years ago.

He put on his best (not the colorful one - this really wasn't about performing monkeys) suit. He combed his hair. He went to the memorial and listened to bells tolling in memory. He listened to speeches. He wondered what his mom would think to hear a hundred years later a working woman still only earned some 77 some cents to the dollar a man'd get for the same work. 

Actually, no. He didn't wonder. He smiled and went to write names in chalk on sidewalks in front of houses. He drew a portrait of his mom in front of their old house. She was smiling and wearing a sash.

While he drew, he lent chalk to the children playing on the street. Soon the sidewalks were very colorful and his mom was standing next to a unicorn with six legs.

~~~~~~~~~~  
Literature:

Marquise de Merteuil was not an actual person. This meant that she did not get smallpox that scarred her face. She did not lose her fortune. She certainly did not lose her head in the French Revolution. She was epistolary. She was a master of manipulation. She was horrible. She acknowledged that. But really, she wasn't the one who'd defined the story. So, she spent her time in earlier letters. 

She could perhaps have escaped to England via the pages of "A Factory of Cunning." Perhaps fled all the way to America to be Irene Adler's grandmother. There on the Jersey Shores.

She could have had tea with Pamela, her virtuous beauty rewarded with estate (and I could have been mistress of all this), and she could have smiled and smiled and smiled. What a beautiful smile. What level eyes. Neither blinded. Although, she was blind in one eye and scarred when she visited Jane Eyre. There were uses to such things.

She could have clapped her hands lightly when Sister Carrie took center stage playing Lady MacBeth.

She lived in a binder. What of it? In photocopied notes and doodled margins. She serenely nodded her head to the advice of Ursula and considered Queen Ariel. 

What she was told was of no interest, but she did so love to learn whatever it was they were trying to hide. Valmont would never be an angel or a whore. 

The Marquise de Merteuil smiled sweetly and envied the death of Tiamat, which made the world when the hero killed her. A duel for Valmont and smallpox for Merteuil. But, no, she lived in a binder. The highlighter easily marked what she should avoid in her own text. Unless it was useful.

Wonder Woman brightly emblazoned on the separator tugged at her star spangled bathing suit and offered Merteuil silphium before running off to wrestle the Sphinx. Silphium. Wild carrots and rue. Just because she was from an island full of women, didn't mean that Amazonian warriors didn't know about birth control. Amazonians didn't always stay on the island.

The girl doodling in the margins nibbled on the end of her pen and put a final stroke on Merteuil's dress. 

She decided to dress as Cordelia Naismith at the con that weekend. She just gotten her Betan Astronomical Survey patch.

Her name could be said to be lost. But that was because she wrote other women's names across her binder. She never drew herself.

Perhaps now would be the time to draw her.

Here: (Although, it's anyone's guess why she's in a box.)

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~~~~~~

Hardly a thousand words this is. Hardly enough to be binders "full" of women. 

Still it's a thought. Half the world's population. In binders.

There are still plenty of empty pages. This is the internet after all. You can fill in your own.


End file.
